In looking through the archive collections of The Museum of Rural Life (MERL), it is clear that filmstrips played a key role in transmitting information about the countryside, food and farming throughout the 20th century. The Educational Agricultural Film Strip Collection (D DX1644), for example, contains over thirty filmstrips, all produced in the 1970s and 80s. These filmstrips, which were in most cases produced by Educational Productions Ltd, cover topics such as apple blemishes, life in a hedgerow and the trees of Britain, while government work is also prominently represented at The MERL. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food: Agricultural Development and Advisory Service Archive (SR ADAS) contains over eighty examples from the 1940s and 1950s on topics such as elementary fertiliser chemistry, greenhouse growing and even types of mowers.
But it does not end here. In the University of Reading Special Collections – housed on the same site as The MERL – are records that shed light on the very processes of filmstrip production. The Archive of British Printing and Publishing includes the archives of major publishing houses such as Longman, Allen and Unwin and Chatto and Windus. This is where the link with the history of filmstrip production lies. For example, the George Allen & Unwin Archive holds correspondence with the British filmstrip firm, Common Ground Ltd who were seeking permission to produce a filmstrip based on the book The Kon-Tiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdahl.
Another publishing firm, Longman, eventually acquired Common Ground in the late 1960s, and so the Longman Archive contains a wide range of ephemera that offer rare insights into the business of filmstrips. This includes extensive lists of filmstrips, detailed sales figures, and the minutes of management committee meetings. For example, a sales agreement from 1951 lists not only the copyright for all the filmstrips produced but also all the office furniture and photographic equipment used by the company. These production histories, revealing company processes and motivations, can be linked through to the filmstrips themselves, as the Educational Agricultural Film Strip Collection in The MERL’s archives even holds a couple of examples of Common Ground Ltd.’s filmstrips.
From conception, through production, marketing and the final product, The MERL and University of Reading Special Collections offer a holistic, and rare, perspective on the history of filmstrip making.
Adam Lines (Collections Academic Liaison Officer, The Museum of English Rural Life and University of Reading Special Collections)